It has now been roughly 10 years since Britney Spears suffered what was widely characterized as, for lack of another all-encompassing word, a "meltdown."
She had already been acting not very pop-princessy for a few years before that, but 2007 was the year the mother of two was in and out of rehab and, far more memorably, shaved her head.
So with that anniversary on the brain, Lifetime is planning to celebrate accordingly.
The cable network has upped its class factor over the years with shows like Project Runway, Drop Dead Diva and most recently UnREAL, but it remains, along with the Lifetime Movie Network, the premier destination for ripped-from-both-the-headlines-and-your-worst-nightmares fare such as How I Killed Your Mother, Babysitters Ruin Lives and My Rich, Handsome, Otherwise Perfect Husband Turned Into a Stalker.
None of those titles are real, but...they're inspired by true events.
Yet while crime butters the bread, Lifetime has also been the landing place for numerous biopics, including The Brittany Murphy Story, Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, Anna Nicole, Whitney and Grace of Monaco (though that last one was demoted from an intended theatrical release).
Next up is Britney Ever After, starring Australian actress Natasha Bassett as Spears—and judging by the trailer, someone's been busy perfecting her Louisiana drawl.
But though the now 35-year-old Spears' life story to date can "end" on an upswing, unlike the aforementioned stars given the Lifetime treatment (may they all RIP), it's apparent the majority of the movie focuses on the downswing that started not long after Britney and Justin Timberlake (played here by Nathan Keyes) broke up.
Reasonable questions abound as to why this movie is happening, aside from the fact that it has the nice, round number of 10 attached to it.
What happened to Britney in real life a decade ago was certainly dramatic and proved fodder for countless headlines about stars spiraling out of control, the pitfalls of young fame, aggressive paparazzi, family values, underwear, the proper way to get out of a car and, ultimately, drastic haircuts.
But unlike some celebrities' dramatic life stories, Britney's nadir came from within, the result of an emotional breakdown that ultimately required medical attention. So to purport to be telling her story from her point of view is quite the leap, considering Britney Ever After is unauthorized, i.e. not being made with the approval or assistance of Spears or anyone on her team.
And while there are bigger issues at play in Britney's story about celebrity and the media, how much context should we bet on getting from this movie? So far it looks to be telling a story we already know (no matter how much anyone promises that we only think we know the whole story) and it's already exploiting its trump card in the trailer.
Moreover, it usually takes longer than two hours to truly dive beneath the surface of a story we're already familiar with. Case in point: FX's The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story used every second of its 10 hour-plus episodes to make the Emmy-winning FX series into something more than the cheesy-sounding sum of its parts. The end result: mission accomplished.
Team Ryan Murphy will attempt to recreate the magic with its next three seasons of ACS, which will focus, respectively, on unspecified events that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 1997 murder of Gianni Versace and the Monica Lewinsky scandal—the former and latter, especially, being rife with possibility for deep dives into socio-political topics.
Not that the makers of Britney Ever After claim to be setting their sights quite so high—ratings and trending on Twitter will surely suffice—but its very existence implies that it's a story that needs reenacting.
And the jury's out on that.
Events having taken place at least 10 years ago, they're not recent enough to prompt cries of "too soon!", nor were they so long ago to be irrelevant. Yet Spears' troubles still seem like unlikely fodder to revisit right here, right now.
You can't exactly accuse the filmmakers of dredging up old news, considering Britney's meltdown is still a highly cited occurrence when it comes to updates about her life and wider discussions about celebrity scandals and memorable moments in pop culture history.
But also, why now, when Britney Spears is doing so well? Somehow she did turn things around, she persevered, her loyal fan base has only grown over the years and "It's Britney, bitch" has become a rallying cry.
Yet it's actually her current success that the filmmakers have pointed to in explaining the movie to those questioning its timeliness.
"To have her in such great form with a huge hit, she's super relevant and current—I think the young people watching MTV now are as connected to her as they were back in the TRL days," Britney Ever After executive producer Jesse Ignjatovic told Entertainment Weekly last summer when the project was announced.
That being said, it's still no wonder that Spears isn't thrilled by the prospect of her worst days playing out once again on camera, this time including the parts that happened behind closed doors.
Britney is "not contributing in any way, shape or form...nor does it have her blessing," her rep also told EW.
But Britney Ever After, which premieres Feb. 18, is one of countless biopics that have proceeded without authorized support. The aforementioned Whitney Houston, Aaliyah and Brittany Murphy movies were all made without the approval of the late stars' families, for instance.
"If you watch this movie, watch it knowing that Lifetime is notorious for making bad biopics of deceased celebrities and brace yourself for the worst," Houston's sister-in-law Pat Houston warned in a statement when Whitney aired in 2015, three years after the singer's death. "You should not be surprised that someone decided to do a made for TV biopic. And, I might add, without the family's blessing and despite her mother's request to not do this movie. It happens every day."
Timbaland, who worked closely with Aaliyah before she was killed in a plane crash when she was only 22, was among many who slammed the 2014 Lifetime movie starring Alexandra Shipp as the ill-fated artist. Zendaya had originally been lined up to star, but she pulled out of the project when the backlash to the very idea of the movie proved too much.
"This is why people should never remake movies. Bulls--t happens, bulls--t happens. Now you have to deal with the consequences," Timbaland said in a video he posted on Instagram (presumably meaning the movie should've never been made in the first place).
The Brittany Murphy story also aired in 2014, five years after the 32-year-old died suddenly of pneumonia and anemia complications (her husband then died five months later), prompting a tirade from the late actress' estranged father that preceded hideous reviews across the board.
"I am disgusted and outraged that Lifetime decided to produce such a trashy project, defiling the memory of my beautiful, talented daughter, Brittany Murphy," Angelo Bertolotti told the Examiner at the time. "Frankly, I am amazed at their audacity of calling it 'a true story,' without conducting any research or consulting with any members of the family. The Brittany Murphy Story is an affront to everything my daughter was in real life. It's hideous, unauthorized and completely untrue."
Not that Lifetime is always guilty of bad taste. Some people, crimes or pop culture legends are endlessly fascinating, whether the finished product gives them their due or not. And plenty of celebrities have been on board with the telling of their stories.
Fantasia Barrino and gymnast Gabby Douglas even starred in their own Lifetime biopics to help get the story right.
And of course the machine wouldn't keep churning out the product if the audience didn't keep showing up.
Lifetime's more recent offerings have included The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (which was actually quite well-done in two parts and proof that some subjects are timeless); Who Killed JonBenét?, which piggybacked on the two-night investigatory CBS special about the still unsolved murder and a variety of other programming surrounding the 20-year mark since the 6-year-old's death; and Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart, which like Britney's story falls into the roller-coaster-but-ultimately-triumphant category.
And lest anyone mistake Britney Ever After for a coup de grâce, Lifetime has already announced Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland (the working title), which will be based on a book penned by one of Jackson's bodyguards about the King of Pop's final days.
That movie news came right on the heels of the cancellation of the episode of the U.K. spoof series Urban Myths that tackled an already debunked story about Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando on a road trip they were rumored to have taken when air travel was halted immediately following 9-11. The casting of the British and very white Joseph Fiennes as Jackson had drawn the scorn of Paris Jackson and other family members.
Navi, a veteran Jackson impersonator, will make his acting debut in the Lifetime movie.
Now Michael Jackson obviously had a very fascinating, complicated life, one that hasn't become any easier to understand in hindsight as, going on six years after his death at 50, his music has reclaimed center stage but questions and controversy stemming from allegations about his private life remain.
But that very inscrutability also makes him an impossible, albeit compelling, subject to properly dramatize in a couple hours—and yet at this point Lifetime must be expecting the inevitable backlash, including objections from a family that has been fiercely protective of Jackson's legacy.
The legalities concerning the rights to books and music are pretty straight-forward. If you don't secure the rights, you're not supposed to use the material. Aaliyah had to make do without permission to use her song catalog, and the big-screen Jimi Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side infamously couldn't include "Purple Haze" or anything else the guitar legend wrote due to licensing issues.
But no one owns the rights to general facts that are just...out there, as they are about Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Brittany Murphy, et al. Hence all the unauthorized biographies and biopics, which tend to find a way to exist.
They can't all be the three-part The New Edition Story, which got underway last night on BET (and the Twitter party started hours before showtime) with the blessing of each member of the R&B group, who also served as co-producers.
"It was 10 years of chasing it; of getting the life rights and getting the story. We just believed that somehow it was going to work out," executive producer Jesse Collins told Vibe. "We started the process, flew [writer Abdul Williams] all over the country to meet with each one [of the members of New Edition], their friends, their family, and people that have worked with them."
Collins continued: "Two people believed in it and one of them was at BET, but even then we still didn't have [Bobby Brown's] life rights. I remember seven or six years ago, me and Brooke Payne [were] in a club trying to get Bob to sign, with a contract in our hand. We are talking to Tommy (Bobby Brown's brother). Bobby at that time just wasn't ready to sign, so once he finally committed it was definitely a pop champagne moment when we saw all six signatures."
No wonder fans were so excited!
But most made-for-TV movies that similarly bill themselves as biopics aren't the labor of love that The New Edition Story was for its creators. Not all of them can be; however, having the approval—or at least the begrudging OK—of the subject matter (or those who really knew and loved them) makes all the difference as far as lessening the ick factor when a film revisits a person's darkest days.
Even though Britney Ever After presumably ends on an up note, there's no point without the trauma—and Spears wants no part of reliving it. She's been there, done that, and come out stronger on the other side.
Which isn't to say that someone necessarily needs her blessing to dramatize her life. Plenty of people find Spears' story movie-worthy, her reputation as one of the biggest pop stars ever is intact no matter what, and if the movie turns out to be so much tripe her fans will make their voices heard online. And surely no one's goal was to render the woman onscreen as anything other than human.
But as much as any person who has entertained so many people and whose fame turned her into so much grist for the mill, Britney at least deserves to have her story told right.